These males can take the heat — an advantage when it comes to global warming. Called valerian plants, they sport small white flowers. One type of bloom grows on male plants, another type on female plants. And in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, the males and females have responded differently to warmer and drier weather. That’s the finding of a new study.

Coral reefs won’t be out of hot water for quite a while. These normally colorful undersea ecosystems are under increasing stress, mostly because of warming oceans. Now, researchers report that a global coral bleaching event began in June 2014. The longest on record, it has sapped the color out of vast areas of coral — and now threatens their health. The reefs affected cover a larger area than...

Every few years, the world’s weather is thrown off balance. It happens when surface waters near the equator in the eastern and central Pacific Ocean warm up just a fraction of a degree. Afterward, some regions experience heavier rainfall than normal — and flooding. Others will battle drought and wildfires. Still others might have to contend with ice storms and other extreme weather. This...

Greenhouse gases are a major contributor to climate change. But a new technique can turn one of these gases into solid rock before it floats up into the atmosphere. If widely adopted, such a move might just help slow global warming.

As part of a test program, researchers in Iceland injected gaseous carbon dioxide (CO2) into basalt (Bah-SALT). It’s the type of rock that lava turns into...

Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, is not a calm giant. It’s covered in swirling clouds that form colorful stripes and spots. Those cloud features include the famous Great Red Spot. It’s a storm wider than Earth —one that has been raging for several hundred years. Now scientists have discovered that Jupiter’s turbulence is not just skin deep. The storms and spots that we can see...

Laser blasts might one day help scientists tweak Earth’s temperature. To do that, the lasers would be aimed at thin, wispy cirrus clouds. By shattering the ice crystals in them, those laser zaps might help cool the ground-level climate.

It’s a clever idea, although not ready for prime time. It also has its critics.

Hair standing on end during a thunderstorm is a bad sign. It means lightning is on its way. On one faraway planet, though, static hair might be the least of your worries.

The planet is HAT-P-11b. It is an exoplanet — a planet far outside Earth’s solar system — some 124 light-years away. Scientists detected a surge of radio waves from the planet several years ago. Those waves could be...

In recent decades, Earth’s climate has been changing. That’s led to warmer temperatures and more very hot days. At the same time, levels of air pollution are growing. All that heat and dirty air will cause a lot more people to sicken — and even die. That’s the conclusion that emerges from three new analyses of climate trends in the eastern United States.

Bees may soon need to supplement their diet with protein shakes of their own. Pollen normally provides their protein. But rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere have sapped pollen of its protein. That’s the finding of a new study.

When a bee visits a flower, she may drink its nectar and collect its pollen. Nectar is like a sugar-shot of energy. Pollen, in contrast,...

By making their own clouds, scientists have figured out how some of the fattest water droplets form. And, they find, it’s what’s on the outside that matters.

Climate scientists need to understand how water droplets assemble into colossal clouds. That’s the only way they can reproduce cloud formation in the computer programs that they use to model climate change. Right now, that’s...